Chapter 23: Ships into warships

About two weeks after Jervis Bay came to Earth orbit, she was joined by Sancho Panza. The headquarters Aurora, Blue Light, followed in another two weeks. The team began working with their primary ship, Jervis Bay, in orbit near the District 17 Aurora, Blue Light. While the designs and tactics were well along, it was still a development period. This period included additional tradeoffs of positioning functions on the Minuit-class ships, their pods, and their small craft.

Terry's household clan, now with Dolores as a Sponsor, involved Rona and Moe's households as well. They started to interact with the naval and marine units through Moe and Beatrice. As might be expected by a specialized unit that embarked on ships, they worked more among one another than with the ships' companies. They'd be riding pods. It would be logical, though, for there to be more interaction with those people who operated the shuttles, pod tenders, and moved the pods.

Terry was annoyed at one seemingly trivial decision that was hard to make. Small craft operations, not limited to shuttles, were becoming a distinct area of operational doctrine and training. While the Minuit-class certainly had no resemblance to a major Earth aircraft carrier, it did have the potential to be comparable to a mother ship for the equivalent of helicopters, remotely piloted vehicles, and autonomous drones. From Japanese destroyers with more than the usual two helicopters, to U.S. Navy amphibious ships supporting air operations, to Italian and Spanish small carriers, such ideas were evolving on Earth. No one was quite sure what to call the function on Earth space vessels -- it clearly wasn't an "air department". Terry disliked the U.S. Air Force tendency to rename everything "Aerospace". He wanted something that could cover the shuttles and unmanned systems, satellite launches, and pad deployment.

Moe and Terry met to discuss operations of the various external, non-superluminal-capable, vehicles. "Moe," said Terry, "before we get into details, something silly is bothering me. What do we call the collection of platforms that move away from the ship, and for that matter the ship's support for them? Air detachment or air wing sounds weird in vacuum, until perhaps we get up to the space equivalent of an aircraft carrier. Would it offend your naval traditions if I decreed that the one-word solution is boat? Boat officer for a ship commands all extravehicular operations? As far as I can tell, there's no confusion between the Air Department of a carrier and its Air Wing, so we go with Boat Department for the ship side and Boat Detachment for the crews."

"Sure, Terry. I'm not compulsive about tradition. Maybe Central Command will decree something else, but until then, let's just do it. As a matter of fact, I have an ideal candidate for a squadron-level person for what we can call boat operations. Retired naval aviator, test pilot school graduate, who qualified as an astronaut but went back to the fleet after too many NASA budget cuts. In the fleet, however, he went off flight status for medical reasons, served a shortened air department head tour, and then went into industry as an idea person for carriers. He's named Don Langley.

"Think he'd work out OK with John Tolstoy?"

"Don't think there'd be any problem. Remember John was usually at the front line, not the base -- he'd depend on them, and vice versa. In the field -- does that make sense for space? No matter. In the field, he'd be in the task force organization. We'd still need a boat officer and a boat detachment commander for each ship. Might have some subordinate commanders, such as shuttle or unmanned vehicle leader. No need for complex structures for onesies and twosies, like pod tenders." He thought for a moment. "We might want to have a separate structure for pod construction and maintenance, but, after all, on carriers, first-level maintenance is with the aircraft squadrons, while there's a ship-side Intermediate Aviation Maintenance Department. Yeah, I like that. Intermediate Boat Maintenance, mostly for pods but also for major overhauls."

"Moe, are we going to have major shuttle overhauls in a replicator environment?"

"Sure. You can't fit industrial replicators on our ships. Intermediate Maintenance are going to be experts on taking on pods and shuttles from the manufacturing centers like Midway or eventually McMasterat, and also offloading them. My guess is that there will be shipping and operations configurations of the boats."

"OK. I'll defer to you for picking Don as the group boat commander, or whatever. Maybe give him a maintenance deputy rather than a whole intermediate maintenance department. We'll still need operations leaders for each ship -- aviation boatswains maybe? -- and also flight leaders. You go ahead and pick the boatswains, and let's talk together to the leaders since they have to work both on a ship and away from it."

"That sounds good, Terry. I have two tentative boat detachment officers. Both are Harrier fighter drivers, one from the U.S. and one from the Spanish Marines. We might also want to try out some helicopter unit commanders. In any event, these people definitely can help us develop the boat designs." Boat officers Major Molly Fiero and Concepcion Martinez were Marine aviators, U.S. and Spanish respectively. The idea was that the boat officer, on each ship, would command the craft themselves, both aboard and in action, while the traffic officer would control ships and boats in the immediate space, as well as satellite and tethered vehicle operations. For multiple ship operations, one traffic officer would concentrate on launch and retrieval for each ship, while the squadron level traffic officer would deal with space deconfliction. Each of these officers would recruit their staffs.

"Remember, Terry, that we haven't fine-tuned the boat designs. We can probably treat the basic Galileos as comparable to an unarmed Blackhawk helicopter in terms of loading doctrine, and maybe some very primitive armament like strap-on rockets or self-guiding missiles. In fact, that's not a bad idea -- see if we can bolt on the winglets from an Apache attack helicopter, which are there as mount points for weapons as much as for lift. We'd only need a small cable penetration through the airtight wall, to electronics we can mount in the cabin. The Housecat is more like a medium to heavy transport like the Chinook or Super Stallion helicopter, or the Osprey tilt-rotor. Flying characteristics are very different, but they are comparable in the way we'd use them on ground missions. With the Housecat, also think of the Landing Craft Utility that we use between ships."

While they clearly needed purpose-built aerospace craft, they had to work with what they had. Galileo shuttlecraft were available. They could be replicated in sections, so modular changes were possible. One of these was making an attack variant, much as the HueyCobra was a variant on the original transport UH-1 Huey helicopters of the Vietnam War. The GalileoCobra did away with the crew compartment and reorganized the cockpit to put the pilot and copilot/gunner behind one another. Winglets gave mounting hard points for weapons, and turrets, extensible below the hull, replaced the crew compartment.

Terry asked, "Norwegian, you are familiar, I trust, with Western shipboard helicopters such as the H-60 Blackhawk series. Do you know the relationship between naval H-60's, and the MQ-8 drone helicopter?"

"Yes, the MQ-8 is smaller but of comparable performance. Three MQ-8's require the support and hangar space needed for one Blackhawk."

"So is it plausible that you AIs, without help, could define a smaller drone Galileo, which would have sensor bays and equipment winglets, but more of which could fit into the space of one Galileo? Call it the Mini-Gal? I'm thinking of the bays and wing pods of a U-2."

Norwegian paused briefly. "Yes, I think that's straightforward."

"OK. I'll want you to separate design of the housings for the sensors, and of the sensors. Let me explain. Often, we want to have two of the same kind of sensor aimed at the same target, so we can construct a three-dimensional view. In a U-2, the bays are as far apart as the fuselage permits.

"We will build pods to store and launch the shuttles, so we can make any pod-capable vessel a mother ship for them."

Chloe requested attention. Actually, Terry mused, Chloe did not have to do much to get attention, especially when wearing what she called her gym bunny outfit. Chloe, while in college, still managed to play a fair bit of basketball as well as concentrate on her navigation systems engineering. He could cheerfully do detailed study of whether Chloe, Catherine, or Kim had the longest legs. The three certainly had distinct looks; Chloe was something of an English beauty, with pale skin, red lips, flowing chestnut hair, and brilliant blue eyes.

"Terry, might I suggest you're using a somewhat dated model? As you suggest, it's only possible to get limited separation in a fuselage."

Kim grinned "Separation, eh?" and spread her extremely elegant legs.

"With modern synthetic aperture and drone technology, you can get a much longer baseline for your stereoscopic views by flying multiple sensors in multiple vehicles. It amuses me that the French have been very active in satellite clusters, in that they call their architecture Essiam, the French word for swarm."

Catherine and Karen looked at one another and nodded. With one voice, they repeated "clusters", spread their legs, and kissed Kim on her cheek.

Moe coughed. "That does simplify the sensor problem, Chloe, and if you navigation and aerospace vehicle people can do it, I like it a lot."

Catherine chipped in. "Nice electronic security as well. If you are using active sensors, and we even go to more than two platforms, we can do multistatic jumps among them, so the active sensors come from changing platforms and they are even harder to track back." She smiled at Chloe and ostentatiously closed and crossed her legs. "Speaking of reconfiguration..."

As Chloe did her Basic Instinct leg-crossing response back at Catherine, Terry tore his eyes away. "Ahem. OK, Norwegian, think about a modular assembly that can hold a number of sensors, and be placed into forward or downward-looking positions in a space platform – perhaps multiple holder modules on one platform.

"Norwegian, I'm separating the sensors from weapons. While some do generate energy, that's not intended as a weapon, although a Sa'arm would have problems if it stood in front of a high-power radar. On the other hand, it would have a problem near the space drive. So I assume the AIs can be involved in operating these, just not the weapons -- and maybe just weapons fires. Is that within the scope of your restrictions against combat?"

Norwegian agreed. "Yes. We can have several prototypes available in about a month. It might be necessary to get some engineering technician time to build subassemblies that can then be put into a smaller replicator. The winglets will not be aerodynamic but just mounting surfaces."

"Mounting surfaces", echoed Chloe. Chloe and Catherine looked at one another, stopped crossing their legs, and nodded. Getting up, they raised invitational eyebrows around the meeting room, and wandered off to Catherine's quarters. Moe looked at Terry and nodded. Terry slipped an arm around Siobhan's waist and moved to follow, along with Moe and Athena. Terry rather liked walking behind Athena, watching from glowing bronze hair, to stretchy skirt over full hips, to ultra-spiked heels.

As the women neared the bed, they sensually peeled clothes from one another. Catherine giggled, reached to a shelf, and retrieved a pair of 6" bedroom heels, inquiring if Chloe wanted her own to set off her nakedness.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, they kissed deeply, fondling breasts, and then twisting into a scissors position and began to grind their groins against one another. The men sat on couches and pulled their women to their laps, fondling. Siobhan had been growing ever more confident about her new looks, maternal and solid, a classic MILF. Terry tossed Siobhan's long red hair over his head, giving a warm look to the room.

Moe admired his senior wife, Athena, and chuckled that, indeed, she was a lawyer he wanted to fuck. It was convenient, then, that she was a lawyer that was straightforward about liking things in the ass.

Chloe twisted around and stretched on top of Catherine, kissing. She gasped, between darts of her tongue, "watch us ... be turned on by us ... use us."

While the teams weren't ready to move to the ships, they certainly visited, making recommendations on use, seeing how equipment would fit, and generally rethinking their operations. Living quarters would take up one pod, and a second was assigned to overflow and for meeting rooms.

The labs were the next thing on the list. Terry was the last person in the world that anyone could call sexist, but it just didn't occur to him that female engineers could get as focused as Tim Allen the Toolman when handling, fondling, or caressing fine instruments. He should have been warned, however, when Catherine, the first to have a lab fairly well assembled, put a poster of Tim's assistant, as played by Pamela Anderson, on its door.

Operations pods for sensors and weapons would wait on the labs, although major components, such as the sensor elevators and the weapons launchers, certainly could and were built on Earth.

Catherine set up the electronics lab and machine shop requirements, including a small Faraday cage. Even though every lab would have at least one replicator, and preferably a large and a small one, there still would be needs for detailed assembly, machining and testbeds. Machining would range from computer-assisted design to hand work. Sheri Benjamin was Catherine's junior understudy.

Catherine and Dolores called Terry over to see it, and actually discuss a question or two. The labs did have a foldout bed both for late-night experiment monitoring. As Terry, a bit tired and distracted, wondered why Catherine was actually wearing a white lab coat, universally considered a ceremonial garment among real technical folk; she tripped the release on the bed as Dolores tripped him onto it. He idly wondered how long it had taken her to work on the timing of that move.

"Time to christen the lab!" He began to understand when Catherine unbuttoned the lab coat to reveal little but Catherine, and her favorite reddish-brown thigh-highs. Somewhat to his surprise, however, she didn't jump on him, but turned to the bench, raising a strange piece of equipment and cheerfully cackling. From the corner of his eye, he saw the door open, with Mary and Kim rushing in from their labs.

Dolores didn't quite belly flop onto Terry, but rather firmly assumed the 69 position. Given the choice between struggling and pulling down her thighs as a pair of earmuffs, what was a responsible Sponsor to do?

Meanwhile, Kim helped Dolores undo his pants. He heard a buzzing sound, and Dolores shifted just enough to let him see Catherine holding what, presumably, was the first product of her electronic development bench.

It went "zip" when it moved and "bop" when it stopped,

And "whirr" when it stood still.

I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will.

{r}Tom Paxton, "The Wondrous Toy"

As soon as his waist and hips were free, Dolores wrapped his cock between her breasts and applied her mouth rapidly. Kim removed the remainder of his clothes, and began strong licks between his buttocks, and plunging between them. Dolores' pushed her crotch onto his face as her head moved more rapidly. Kim spread his asscheeks as he heard Catherine come closer with "zip", "bop" and "whirr". Mary came up and inserted one lubricated finger after another, and, while Terry remained stunned, the medical part of his brain told him that he was probably not due for his next scheduled prostate exam from the medical officer.

Instead, she worked in additional fingers, and he felt increasingly slippery, as much as he could concentrate with Dolores' action at top and bottom. Kim slipped down and removed his shoes -- and he arched his back almost strongly enough to dislodge Dolores as Kim did something none of his concubines had ever done -- sucked his toes.

Terry idly wondered how long they had practiced to work out their timing, or if this was multi-unit coordination at almost the Sa'arm level. He concluded it was the former, because if it was the latter, they should simply have told him that they had worked out the secrets of the Sa'arm and would have them destroyed in the following week. No, his attention shifted to his posterior, as Catherine and Mary inserted the whirring, buzzing, bopping, twisting, wiggling thing into him. Dolores wriggled her hips without missing a suck, and Catherine having her control well under control, Mary shifted to start nipping at his nipples.

It didn't take long before he did his best to imitate a spraying champagne bottle at a ship christening. While he rarely drifted to sleep after orgasm, this was an exceptional shock. His eyes grew heavy. The last sound he remembered being a soprano duet of "Arrgh, matey!'

Lauren, Anita, and Joni visited Mike and Midway. They weren't yet ready to set up formal relationships, as they weren't yet to go into space. Still, the dancers wanted to meet him, and establish that they just might be good companions for some of the Midway people. Thankful for transporters, Dolores, and her tiniest tanning bikini, went with them to make appropriate introductions, but decidedly not to be a chaperone.

Harold Whitcomb, previously a medically retired Army officer, had accepted a commission as a major in the Confederacy Navy, and took on the ground workflow for Midway. He optimized the movement of prototypes from ship or aircraft to the replicators, getting feedstock to the replicators, and moving replicated objects to the test and staging areas. The rejuvenated officer juggled the balance among shipping in materials and replicating them, and making the case for more replication capability.

John Tolstoy was the air operations boss, for Earth aircraft bringing supplies and equipment, for flight-testing, and to stage pods and other equipment that would go into space. He became a Sergeant Major in the Confederacy Navy. While his skills certainly overlapped those of Don Langley, his real specialty was operating from unimproved locations in the field. Eventually, he would shift his emphasis to working with Marine landing forces.

Anita struck up a friendship with Harold, based on common professional interests as well as hot sex. Once they realized that he had a superb micro-level perspective on the main supply and manufacturing base, where she understood the macro-level supply chain, the partnership became clearer. They realized they would work closely with John Tolstoy in flying things to orbit, while Dolores would be the person for supply requirements. Both were of Sponsor CAP levels, but that didn't stop them from forming a joint household.

With obvious reluctance, the AIs agreed to put a factory replicator on Midway, primarily to build pods. While a conventional residential or storage pod could meet some of the applications, the group worked out a set of features for what they called the operational pod. Moe reminded the team that pods was not simple containers, but dynamic structures with an extensive nanite component... "For simplicity, all would receive whatever stealth modifications were practical, beginning with radar-absorbing paint."

Calling on Norwegian, he explained additional needs. "The pods we need will have the same outside dimensions as the existing ones, and some extensions on the mating connections to the ship. There will need to be provisions for pairs of airlocks, and connectors for electrical power, cooling, and digital information. While they still would have an internal fusion battery, large electrical power would be cabled from a high power generator behind the drive shield.

"They will need to be able to configure various hatches, top and bottom, and false floors and ceilings. We will need to be able to create two six-meter, one 12-meter, or three four-meter airtight hatches on top and bottom."

"But Terry," replied Norwegian, these are pods. In other words, they are structures full of nanites, which can modify themselves. Tell an AI what you need in hatches, and wait. The pod will make its own. You might have to prebuild any collars that mate to some other hatch, but then replicator copies can guide the pod AI."

"Oh! Thanks, Norwegian. We still, however, need more than hatches. We need the ability to raise sensors on "elevator" tubes, and to open "down" hatches through which the revolver launchers would release their payloads. Both are 6 meters in the longest dimension; the launcher is a little more than three meters wide. Chloe, will you discuss the elevator mechanisms?"

She laughed a bit, observing "Well, some might be depressors, since protrusions will lower relative to the ship as well as raise, but I don't have a better term than elevator. Various pieces of equipment will be inside the pod, on a vertically movable platform, as required by the specific device and pod orientation, it will be raised or lowered through the hatch for operation. The device may have a sealing collar that makes an airtight seal with the inside of the pod.

"Other functions will keep a device, such as a launcher, inside the pod, but release deployable objects through the hatch. Ejector functions are the specialty of Sergeant Major Thomas.

"In yet other cases, an object, such as a shuttle or drone, will go in and out of the pod, under the control of attractors and repulsors. This is along the lines of flight deck operations. We don't really have a specialist here yet, although we will try to get some Navy people, such as an aviation boatswain.

"There will be three other classes of pod: tethered by cables, free orbiting, and expendable for reentry. These fall into our equivalent of a carrier's air department, and we also need specialists"

Terry asked Don Langley to talk about the boats and drones. "Drones carrying sensors might either fly from the heavy launchers, or from hangar bay pods. The basic hangar pod had two hatches and held four Galileos. Either or both hatch positions could carry six mini-Gals.

"We need aviation boatswain's mates for the actual hangar/flight deck operations. Moe, how do we recruit some from the Navy or Navy retirees?"

Several industrial replicators arrived. Terry made a preliminary decision to use 80% of the factory capability to make pods, until they had their base requirements for testing each major pod-contained type. Residential pods were not a technical challenge, but were still more appropriate than conventional housing for base and attached personnel who would eventually live in pods.

Moe described his approach to ship modification. He had started thinking about it when the candidate vessel was the K'treel, but things improved with the larger, still pod-carrying, Peter Minuit class.

"Let me start with things that will be visible from the outside of the ship, although most of the modifications to the ship itself will involve electronics or closely associated electrical power. There are also some special cases such as putting a laboratory support nuclear reactor behind the drive shield, which will be Elaine's project.

"Nevertheless, there's one set of external modifications that I'd like to have. This may sound almost silly, but there was a U.S. technique, for making satellites stealthy, called ZIRCONIC; MISTY was a satellite using it. Effectively, it put collapsible radar and light-absorbing curtains between the satellite and the Earth.

"There are going to be times where we are going to be holding a quiet position, its active radar off, and monitoring through passive sensors. If we can set up these "blinds", probably close to the sensors and with holes cut for them, we can make the ship much harder to detect. The things won't hold together if we go into atmosphere, but, on the other hand, they can be so small and light that we can carry several sets. I'll leave it to the designers, but I'd guess that they would go into boxes or bulges on the skin of the ship, and unfold much like Sergeant Major Thomas' folding antennas.

"I suspect we are going to wind up wanting some projections that might look a bit like wings, like the detachable winglets used on attack helicopters, primarily to provide weapons and sensor mounting points. Hollow winglets also can hold various antennas. There's an evolving technology of conformal antennas, where the hull itself can be part of a flat-panel antenna. Such antennas are Active Electronically Scanned Arrays (AESA).

"AESA has a big scalability advantage over previous antenna technology. Rather than having a transmitter whose output goes to lots of little radiating elements, the elements themselves become independent transmitters and receivers. A typical element, with Earth technology, is around the size of a quart of milk. The more area in which elements can go, the more power you can have. "AESAs can go onto any convenient flat surface. In general, they should not try to cover more than 120 degrees of azimuth. A 60 degree hexagon is best and a 90 degree square next best

We can adapt antenna arrays, as well as transmitter-receivers, from the Wideband Global Satellite program.

"We don't know if the Sa'arm use missiles. After all, if they haven't faced resistance, why would they need them, other than perhaps for range? We should plan for a point defense system against missiles, but it doesn't need to be our first priority. Guns aren't the best approach for final defense against missiles, but may be a subsystem. I like a space adaptation of the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile, again with the control fins replaced by thrusters. We'll also look at the Russian Kashtan gun system to see if it gives us wider engagement geometry. My initial guess is that we would need four of these installations, on short winglets on the bow and long ones firing over the drive shield. Perhaps, if the radiation doesn't foul it up, one more in the center of the drive area, to protect from six-o-clock attacks.

Moe pointed out "the crew has living and working quarters. You're going to be mission specialists, so we should start with the simplest problem, setting up a pod where you'll sleep. This sort of customization is routine for the AIs.

"Athena, please take on this task, in cooperation with Dolores. A single pod should take the current Wagner and Berg families, but, with the evolution of the clan as well as possible assigned personnel and contractors, plan on at least two residential pods for each ship. When going into action, we'll probably hold it to one pod for mission personnel.

"Next, start cloning the shops and labs we've put into pods here, or mocked-up pods from DIA. These gave the ship a self-repair and continuing development capability. Catherine, Mary, Elaine, and Kim, review what is in your current facilities, and make any changes you need to standardize."

"I think we've been assuming the AIs will do more combat systems design, and certainly operations, than they will under their no-combat rules. It's reasonable to assume they can speed up our computing, perhaps do some sensor operation, but not that they will run the battle management system. We need, therefore, to start from Earth systems. For multiple simultaneous engagements, pretty much means the open-architecture Aegis battle management system, with Cooperative Engagement Capability extensions. We'll use derivatives of its large-volume radar search and tracking. For actual engagement, however, we'll use the more modern local area network and bus electronics taken from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which has an open architecture. Individual weapons would still use the MIL-STD-1553B master/slave bus protocol and the MIL-STD-1760 physical/electrical weapons interface, but over much faster Local Area Networks. At the very least, the ability to transfer imagery meant that the weapons operators could "see" through the weapon sensors, and download images of targets to autonomous pattern matching software.

"While AIs might be more powerful, software already exists for the F-35 onboard computers, which were tightly coupled systems of eighteen German Kontron 6U VPX VX6060's, which, in turn, each had two Intel dual-core processors running real-time Linux. Even without Confederacy improvements, they could be upgraded with processors having more cores. Norwegian, before you start sulking, we will be happy to use Confederacy computers that emulate these specific processors, or run a C/C++ virtual machine.

"The F-35 software code base is twice the size of the F-22, which is often considered the more advanced aircraft: 5.6 million lines of C and C++ in the initial implementation. It was a practical given that the AIs would have to learn to use programs in these languages."

At this point, Terry observed, "Perhaps it's just professional intelligence paranoia, and perhaps it's a lot of experience in getting systems to be interoperable, I worry that we are putting all our eggs in one basket with the AIs. Even if the AIs have the best of intentions toward us, do they really understand the problems of military computing if they don't fight?"